An excellent Nicolas Cage headlines the equally impressive Dream Scenario, a surreal comedy that examines the current state of influencer and cancel culture with wild imagination and grounded emotion.
“Everything is trauma.”
This is the reality that university professor Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage) must face after he becomes an international phenom in a world gone mad. Described as a “remarkable nobody”, Paul becomes a figure of infamy when he appears in the dreams of all matter of people across the globe. Paul doesn’t know why or how this is happening, yet he quickly learns that with such intimate viral fame comes a wave of hatred and villainy that submerges the professor in a sea of disdain.
While the central scenario of Dream Scenario is indeed fantastical, the ramifications are all too real in a world where emotional trauma can be “triggered” in the most ludicrous of ways.
The filmmaking approach that director and writer Kristoffer Borgli (Sick of Myself) utilises in addressing this current situation is both entertaining and innovative; and example of how surrealist cinema can be accessible to both mainstream and arthouse audience, with its blend of unorthodox structure (in which fantasy and reality converge) and a relatable emotional core.
Cue the excellent performance from Nicolas Cage. In his portrayal of an unremarkable and quite pathetic man, Cage cuts a sympathetic and at times hilariously awkward figure whose lack of self-respect and desperate yearning to be noticed makes him an easy target for the hyenas of social and legacy media to pounce.
With bushy beard, spectacles and succession of Cosby sweaters, Cage completes his sad-sack professor with a goofy laugh that, as the kids today would say, is “cringe”. Cage also brings an emotional depth to Paul that is heartbreaking at times and stirringly relatable in the frustration towards a world that assumes, condemns, and ridicules with sinister ease.
With Dream Scenario, Borgli in many ways has presented an American nightmare, a psychological fantasy satire that hits a nerve with just how real this surreal trip of a movie is.
